Who are Liberals addressing?
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1996 <1/11>

      Political rhetoric is the art of saying very much with very few words that inspire emotional reasoned response. That is what people want to hear. It is best accomplished with imagery, sort of like poetry in prose form.
      The old joke is the flag, motherhood and apple pie. In those terms it is politically incorrect today but, "our great nation must help the single mother feed her children," still plays in speeches. A discussion of welfare policy is a sleeper.
      For example, if you are working and not in management then "middle class" and "working men and women" means they are talking about you. If you have any form of government assistance, the poor means you. Elderly and senior citizens means you have retired. If you are among those left, you are the rich.
      Those are the classes. What one says about these groups is an interesting balancing act. In the same speech a politician has to be very careful to separate in time and words the obvious point that the middle class and the rich pay for the elderly and the poor.
      The talent of a good speech writer is to be able to work in both a promise of lower taxes to the middle class and increased benefits to the poor and the elderly in the same speech and have all three groups applauding. That is why a welfare policy discussion is a sleeper, it addresses the problem that you can't have both. But if both have to be mentioned in the same speech and can not be separated then all the new money to pay for the benefits and replace the loss in taxes will come from the rich.
      That is the sum and substance of the Democrat liberal social rhetoric. Every presentation of their ideas is a variation upon these themes. It stirs feelings of being a good person interested in helping others and that is its purpose. Its purpose is not for people to think about it.
      Note this is an opinion piece and if I digress into numbers it will become a sleeper. Even though actual numbers would discredit every implication of the social rhetoric readers would turn off. The purpose of pieces like this is to get people to emote so strongly that they think despite themselves.
      So let me point out the federal government has no authority any place in its constitution to support either the poor or the elderly. Now I agree that every normal person holds there is an obligation to some extent and in some form to the needy among us if only not to kick them into the street in the middle of a blizzard.
      But it is not written any place that a third person can force one person to support another. It is not written that a third person can take from one person and give to another. It is not written that one person can establish the criteria for the giving and taking.
      Some would point to a moral obligation. I would remind them that a moral obligation comes from religion and we in this country are protected from the imposition of religious principles. Some would deny it is religion yet claim authority for it yet they can never ascribe that authority. They can not because there is none.
      And the latter day simplification of charity even as proposed by the Bishop of Rome, the history of whose church is long enough to show him otherwise, is not support the poor. A rounded view of charity is to prevent poverty and all of its causes in the first place and in any manner possible short of deceit and deception.
      For example, drugs cause poverty if not in the use of them then in the paying for them. Having a child before being able to support that child causes poverty. Were both drugs and premarital sex condemned equally there is a chance of reducing poverty levels.
      Condemning both is charity. It is preventive charity. And throwing up your hands and saying times have changed regarding premarital sex is no different than doing the same regarding drugs.
      But there is a more important aspect to true charity, that there be a penalty for not listening to correct and proper advice. Drugs users get that. It is called prison. No one subsidizes their drugs upon their choice to become addicts.
      It would be heart wrenching to see a mother and child living on the streets begging for money. I suggest that any number of young women walking by and seeing what could happen to them would be an object lesson that would be greater than any fire and brimstone teaching from the pulpit. Yet it is considered charity to remove all penalties and thus all object lessons.
      It is obvious why our welfare system got started. It hurts less to complain about taxes than to walk past people like that. It was not for their benefit but for ours. And if you are honest you will admit your reactions to the above few paragraphs were exactly that.
      But in salving our own feelings look at what we are not letting our children learn. Our welfare system is like saving a child from being burned not by telling them the consequences of touching something hot but by removing everything hot from the home. But outside the home there are hot things. We have done them no favor by shielding them from the real world.
      Rather our welfare system creates an artificial real world, one that exists solely at the sufferance of its creators. It is not the real world. The comfort we take by creating this faerie land and putting people into it hardly squares with the whole idea of charity.
      Some can still find comfort in this fantasy they put so many people into. They are very upset at the idea of this artificial world being replaced by the real world. But times are changing and the facade is collapsing under its own falsity. The cost of maintaining the illusion has become too great. Welfare is coming to an end.